Developers

Everything posted by OptimusCrime

I've been in this situation a few times myself. In a live game environment these things can happen and will happen.
I'm curious to hear your stories; how did you work through the problem internally, what was the response to the community, and the final remediation (if there was any).
A few topics that come to mind:
- You've released an update that breaks the game and people are disconnecting from the game, losing time
- A balance change has been made which negatively impacts the economy (users complain its a cash grab)
- Updates are made to the game and patch notes do not reflect some of these changes
- Your situation isn't on this list? Tell me more.

This is purely hypothetical and looking for some additional input.
Let's say you have a game that is approaching the release deadline and a developer is stuck on one particular issue. The size of the bug has not been identified, but you feel this may put you off course and the dev needs assistance.
What would you do?
How many ways could you solve this problem?
How do you make sure this doesn't occur in the future with other developers?
Thanks ahead of time.

Great! These are all really good answers and I can tell its a situation that is all too familiar. I've run up against this with tech projects before, but they were always minimal.
In terms of steps to make sure this doesn't happen again:
- Talk to the developer about escalating issues in a stand-up if they feel stuck or need help. Foster communication in an environment they feel encouraged to achieve the best outcome for the team.
- Look into the estimation process for the bug. Where did the under estimation occur and was the risk of spending extra time attributed for? Advise to relatively size the problem based on similar issues (fibonacci sequence or sizing) if we saw day/hour estimations were not working.
- If it's discovered this issue was assigned to a developer without the proper experience, assign a resource to provide guidance next time.